What is the National Data Index (Nudee)? Its three components
The National Data Index (Nudee) is issued by the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) to measure how well government entities manage and govern their data. It has become the primary benchmark for data governance in Saudi Arabia, so an entity that wants to raise its score needs to understand exactly what is measured before it launches any improvement programme.
The index measures three components: data management maturity, compliance with NDMO controls (the controls of the National Data Management Office), and data quality. Its scope spans 15 knowledge domains, 14 data-management domains plus data security and protection, which break down into 77 NDMO controls and 191 specifications, alongside 42 maturity questions.
The 15 domains are Data Governance; Metadata and Data Catalog; Data Quality; Data Storage; Content and Document Management; Data Modeling and Architecture; Reference and Master Data Management; Business Intelligence and Analytics; Data Integration and Sharing; Data Value Realization; Open Data; Freedom of Information; Data Classification; Personal Data Protection; and Data Security and Protection.
Maturity is scored on five levels, from Establishing through Defined, Activated and Mastered up to Pioneer, with a state of No Capability below the first level. An entity moves up a level when its evidence shows that practices are documented, applied and measured, not merely declared.
The final score combines all three components, which means that concentrating on one of them, policies for instance, is not enough. An entity with complete policies and poor-quality data, or with applied controls and no documented evidence, loses in one component what it gained in another. Successful improvement programmes therefore work on all three components in parallel.
The common gaps that lower the score
In practice, a low score rarely means that nothing has been done. More often the work exists but is not visible to the assessor in the form the index requires. Three gaps recur more than any other.
Evidence and documents
Each of the 191 specifications expects evidence that it is applied: an approved policy, a meeting minute, a register, a screenshot from a system. Many entities hold this evidence scattered across mailboxes and personal folders, so at assessment time it is either not produced at all or produced as outdated, unapproved versions. Controls that are genuinely applied end up counted as not applied.
Data quality
The data quality component measures the entity's actual data rather than its documents, and it focuses on critical data elements such as beneficiary, establishment and location records. Without defined quality rules and periodic measurement of dimensions such as completeness, accuracy, consistency and uniqueness, the entity loses points here even when its policies are complete on paper.
Governance that exists on paper only
Many entities have a decision establishing a data governance committee and an appointed data executive, yet the committee does not meet, issues no decisions, and departmental data owners have no clear mandate. The index draws a sharp line between documented governance and activated governance: the higher maturity levels are only awarded when roles are filled, meetings are held and decisions are followed up.
Practical steps to raise the score
The entity needs a structured programme that ties each of the 15 domains to an owner, a body of evidence and a performance indicator. The following eight steps are a workable starting point for most entities, whatever their current level.
- Nominate an owner per domain. Name an accountable owner for each of the 15 domains, responsible for its controls and specifications and for producing their evidence, and notify them of that responsibility formally.
- Map every specification to evidence. Build a matrix of the 191 specifications that states, for each one, the evidence required, its type, where it lives and its status (available, needs approval, or missing). This matrix becomes the backbone of the whole programme.
- Run a self-assessment against the 42 maturity questions. Answer honestly and on the basis of evidence rather than impressions, then record the current level in each domain and the target level for the next assessment cycle.
- Build a central evidence register. Collect the documents in one repository with approved versions, approval dates and an owner per document, so that the complete evidence pack can be extracted within hours when the assessment is requested.
- Fix data quality on the critical data elements. Identify the critical data elements, define quality rules for each, measure the quality dimensions on a schedule, and document remediation plans and their results. The index rewards documented measurement more than it rewards perfection.
- Activate the data governance committee. Hold regular meetings with agendas and signed minutes, approve policies and standards through the committee, and follow up on earlier decisions, so that the entity holds a dated trail proving that governance actually operates.
- Track KPIs every month. Define simple indicators such as the share of specifications covered by approved evidence, the share of critical data elements measured, and the number of committee decisions implemented, and present them to leadership regularly.
- Rehearse the assessment. Before the official cycle, run a full dry run in which an independent team reviews the evidence through the assessor's eyes, lists the remaining gaps, and gives the owners enough time to close them.
These steps do not have to happen all at once. The first four lay the foundation over the opening months; the last four form a continuous cycle repeated every quarter until the assessment date. What matters most is that each step leaves a documented output that can serve as evidence in its own right: the self-assessment report, the committee minutes and the KPI reports are all evidence the index recognises within the Data Governance domain.
The role of the NexusGreenData platform
NexusGreenData, the NexusVectors platform, was built to cover every requirement of the index, from the 15 domains to the 77 controls, the 191 specifications and the 42 maturity questions, in a single environment deployed on-premise inside the entity, so that no data or documents leave its boundary.
- A score board that shows the current position of every domain and component, so leadership sees at a glance where the entity stands.
- Gap-to-action recommendations that turn every unmet specification into a task with an owner and a due date.
- Evidence and document management that links each piece of evidence to the specification it proves, with versions and approval dates.
- On-premise deployment inside the entity, in line with its data classification and security requirements.
With these in place, the eight steps above become managed daily work rather than a seasonal project that starts a few weeks before the assessment. One point needs to be clear: the scores the platform calculates are estimates that help the entity see where it stands and where it is heading; they are not the official score issued by SDAIA.
Read more on the NexusGreenData page, or explore the public interactive NDI chartthat lays out the domains, controls and specifications.
The next step
Raising the National Data Index (Nudee) score is not a project that starts a few weeks before the assessment. It is a way of working that makes evidence, data quality and governance part of daily operations. An entity can start today with a self-assessment and an evidence matrix, and rely on a platform that manages all of it in one place.
